idiots and they really are. io's afraid to do that because i was afraid i'd lose my temper and i would say something really stupid. at my age it is easier to let things go and see where they come out. after a considerable argument for providing what are called local preferences, that is a preference of some kind for all commodities whatever is being purchased for people within a certain boundary of companies we have a certain boundary they decided to award a preference of 5% for all of the bidders of commodities only. that's my understanding for example not construction and what services within the city of

yuma now, finally that settled down and i think that is where it came to rest. but even that is a big problem. over that way just 60 miles on the other side of the california border we have a city called central and they compete regularly on our part to the two purchases. down on the border of mexico that i'm pointing out, we have a town called san louis, a pretty big town. they have people there and they were not too happy about that either and on and on. so even here in this little area, you find that when you start giving preferences to somebody, you open up a can of

worms and you can never get a closed again. lee edwards presents a history of the conservative think tank the heritage foundation and profiles the founder. the heritage foundation began in 1973 and it is based in washington, d.c.. it has hundreds of thousands of members on an annual budget of $75 million. >> with good morning. how are you with? >> i think we have 11 people but the first meeting, and we have

come a long way. >> we are going to jump right into asking questions and getting wonderful answers and then we are going to open up to you all and you are going to flood the us with questions as well. leading the way, this wonderful book -- and yes there will be exciting. all of the authors about selling their book. so there will be a book signing i think at 5:40 or something like that this afternoon and we will both be happy to sign it for you as many times as you want. [laughter] >> not every page. [laughter] >> so, in leading the way i read feel that you almost didn't become heritage president. >> it's true. >> because of van offer offer from anthony fisher what's that about and why did you decide to go with heritage?

>> anthony fisher founded an organization called the institute for economic affairs in london and some six years before heritage was even established, i was a graduate fellow at the school of economics and had the opportunity to get to know what iea, the institute of economic affairs, was all about and to work with its founders, ralph harris, arthur and the others. and i saw a think tank in action, and i saw how it could work. later on, fast forward, i was in washington. anthony fisher camp through washington, looked the up and said hey, are around the world we got one that we think is going to be starting in sydney australia, greg lindsey has a

center out there. said we want to do one both in new york and washington, kind of two offices, two bases because they should be covered at the politics. and we talked a lot of very seriously and it started developing. meantime i was an outside director of heritage and we had a meeting about december 76, november, december 76. frank was then the president of heritage and reminded the board he had made a two-year commitment to come in as the president of heritage and he wanted to go back to california. >> can't blame him for that. >> too many people want to move into california these days but back then it was a great spot and this was immediately post

ronald reagan. california's economy was booming and it was one up -- he said why would you want to start a new one when you've been involved with heritage since the first day why don't you just take over heritage instead of moving your family to new york or the rest. so that's kind of how it evolved. i think linda was happy we didn't get to move although she is a native new yorker and would give me hell for telling the best insights three -- >> it's here instead of washington, d.c.. [applause] [laughter] >> the funny thing was, and you recounted this in the book, anthony fisher's attorney was a very prominent new york attorney in the old building and his name was william jay casey as and

ronald reagan's head of the cia. i actually gone up and met them. we were pretty close to signing on the dotted line. come five or six years later, the president of heritage, the founder and i go out and call that bill casey in the super secret office of the cia and asked casey if he would make a major gift for the tenth anniversary. he looked very stern across the desk and said i gave heritage -- i let them have a deal with me. laughter irca is a kind of an interesting little sidelight. >> the spring of 1977 and you are taking over as president of

the [inaudible] [laughter] >> that would have been a terrific idea. >> [inaudible] >> exactly. why, what was there about heritage? of course you had been working on an outside specter but it was basically not that well known. i was a little bit on the preferred the of what was going on in washington, d.c.. why did you do this? >> i came directly from the staff in the house of representatives and paul myrick who was the first president of heritage we both felt we knew what was missing in the washington mix, and that is short, time become a credible arguments from the conservative perspective that could get directly to the policymaker. everybody had plenty of books on their shelves that talked about

free enterprise and how good it is and why the communists are bad and the rest. but when it came to help could or how should you vote on a particular piece of legislation, that wasn't there. the late bill raspberry come a liberal columnist for "the washington post" told me over lunch the neat thing about the heritage background is there a short and i know i can rely on the fact up front we get in the last page that says conclusion. i ripped off and i throw that away. [laughter] he became very enthusiastic about the early policies of school choice and things like that. but we knew what the mitch was. the question was you have a space that seems to be occupied.

>> i wouldn't say it's impossible that it's very difficult. there were think tanks around. you had a modest budget. what is the reaction? what happened in terms of people -- they began using the background and calling upon them and using them. >> at first not much happened, to be frank. that is true not only in the early days of heritage but also in the post days of heritage. it took time to build up relationships with individual members about the house and set senate. one of the things we have talked about with our internal staff is the credibility of the research has to be absolute. there can't be bad numbers and numbers can be adjusted or fix or something like that because the minute you do that you know

your intellectual adversaries will catch you and your friends will never be able to rely on you again. we knew that was the first base that had to be covered and then we had to start picking our issues carefully. some of those i will never forget there was one to be an expansion of medicare as proposed by senator ted kennedy that should be reason enough to have opposed it but we looked at the numbers and we said this isn't the 2 billion-dollar increase, it's really going to be closer to 10 billion. >> kennedy had fairly good friends in the congressional budget office say let's get rid of these young whippersnappers and send it over to the congressional budget office. well they did. the office if kim backend said the number was a little more than 10 billion. they justified our number, discredited kennedy's number and said to the people maybe we can rely on these and then of course mandates for the leadership came

along. you tell that story so well in the first paragraph. >> the thing about writing this mandate was again, fairly small, modest organization on the budget and so forth. we made a commitment to giving the mandates, the leadership before ronald reagan was nominated or e elected. that makes you in my book a pretty big risk taker. >> a couple things happened along the line. we had guys like william simon who'd been secretary of the treasury, secretary of energy, and jack had been the head of the general services administration and we were talking around the dinner table of one of our board dinners and they said a very simple question. if impact you go in and take a

high level position in the new administration -- and they are talking from practical experience -- the first thing you have to do is now you have to get your spouse down here and your kids down here and you have to get them settled into new schools. you have to sell your old house and put all of your investments into the trust and you are worried about that on one side. in the meantime, you are going into your department and the only people you are hearing from are the people who are already there and obviously they have an interest in the status quo because they want to keep doing what they've been doing all along. so, all of a sudden you have been there for six months. you are the cheerleader for the ones that are supposed to be running and redirecting and it's business as usual. whether it is nixon succeeding lbj or carter for that matter, it's business as usual. so how do we make people think differently? how do we tell them what should

have happened differently? and there was a kind of germ of a discussion that led to the whole idea of the mandates and leadership. >> extraordinary. 2000 recommendations of which 55 to 60% were adopted by the ronald reagan administration. that's the record i don't think anyone in a think tank in washington or maybe in the world can talk about, and that is the basis of it. >> not only did that make us credible the washington scene, it was number two on the best-seller list when it came out in january. it's always right behind something called the preppy handbook. [laughter] we never made a number one. we men number two, and the neat thing about it if you go back and look at it is when we talked

about for example, norman, and this was done by volunteers, getting volunteers motivated to actually work on something before the agassi had even been nominated much less an elected this was pretty big with a think tank like we were a minute and it not only said here is what reagan has been talking about in terms of tax cuts come here is how you would do it and here is, you have to restructure the department of the treasury. that is a system. as undersecretary he's higher level and if he is the undersecretary in the department he will chair all of the interdepartmental meetings come he can set the agenda and make sure they're right to veto same thing happens. not only did that happen and they signed it in as one of the

first quarters when he became secretary of the treasury committee appointed by that chaired the committee to actually be the new undersecretary and norman went in and wrote that 1981 bill that became the law that gave the first tax cuts that he was talking about earlier today it so it was very much practical hand. the neat thing about it if you recount again, five years later did it make a difference? you are darn right it made a difference. later on by 1984 there were like 40 other organizations that were dealing knockoffs of what the leadership had been. >> when i interviewed the presidency and other think tanks in washington, d.c., those like brookings and a e.r.a. and kato, has the research made and they said all the difference in the

world. he said we now do with heritage first started. as a heritage, and i say that in the book, they keep changed tank of d.c.. >> i can say this especially among all of you, 25, 30 years ago. there were 600,000 that knew what a think tank was. now they actually voluntarily support us every year to the mean, that's incredible. incredible. >> i'm glad you mentioned that because. it has the kind of membership base that heritage has. it's absolutely extraordinary and gives you a financial than dependence on the editorial independence that no other think-tank house kind of

individual. there's been a indications where individuals have come in and said won't you change your views on this or that particular policy? and when he says no, they come along and say well come here is your donation, a turnaround and a walkout of the realm. that happened with some six-figure gaffes. that is original frankly. only about 5% of the budget comes from corporations and the other is basically individuals, like all of you, foundations, from real america, not in the big guy. >> we are getting some wonderful questions that we are going to

get to that before we do that, i think i would like if you would for you to talk about briefly about the medicine that philosophy and that is one of the questions we have here. you will refer to the three i's and what difference have they made. >> again, one of the things that i've always believed is read a lot, try to communicate that with our children and grandchildren, think about the history of ideas because ideas matter. richard wrote a book called ideas have consequences and they do. that's the first of the three i's. the idea of freedom, the idea of the individual being able to

climb the ladder of opportunity as high as her or his ability will take them and that's the first of the three i's to read the second obviously is the individual's. the individual who can promulgate those ideas and implement them. the idea that the individual might be a very learned person like milton friedman or it might be a practical politician like a jim jordan who we are going to be hearing from later on today. and the third, the same to be missing so long on the conservative side is the institution. when philip was going through the history and heritage, one of the recurring thoughts that came to me is that they talked about missile defense, welfare reform, social security, all these issues. these are issues that come in

and around washington and you have to keep refining them and reaching new audiences. you have to kind of be reselling them all the time and make the sale time after time and day after day and that's why you need an institution. you can't be a one-person blogging machine one. you have to go out and sell those good ideas. the setting vice president celebrated with us the 25th anniversary of ronald reagan 1983 with a strategic defense speech. we just had obama say yes we have to be felt strategic defenses in the northwest part of the united states. 32 years we still don't have a

fully deployed missile defense system. phill talks about repealing of a treaty that we used to have with the soviet union because there hasn't been a soviet union for nine years at that time. we still don't have a fully deployed missile defense system. 1981 went over, met with the ranking republicans in the house, bob michael was in the minority leader and chaired the session and was just asking have you done this mandate for leadership what is going to be your main project going on going on in the new congress to work together. >> they have the 600 ship navy that's come down through the newly elected president ronald reagan and his inaugural address. we talked about other things and i said of course we are going to be talking about social security

reform. >> that was 81. well, by 2005 we had a president in the white house who wasn't successful but at least he had the guts to go round the country and say it is and financially solvent and it can't keep going the way it is. we have to do something about it. and without an institution, you don't have the continuity to keep those arguments on live, to keep reminding the american people year after year of what really needs fundamentally to be changed. the individual institution. >> you begin to see some of the drive and the dynamism that we have hanging on. it was a delight to write this

book and to be able to tell the story. it's truly a remarkable story. you mentioned the word conservative many times and made reference to the movement, so how intertwined are these to? what was the part of your vision back there when you got started thinking about the conservative movement? >> again going back to my times in london when ellen brought me here first of the center for strategic and international studies downtown them out at the hoover institution when he went to hoover so why have a fairly good idea of a lot of the important think tanks are not the country, and if they are on our side and we can agree on

something, let's celebrate, let's add and multiplying and not divide and subtract if we can bring people together and figure out where we can strengthen each other in these arguments let's put aside the differences between a libertarian and a paleoconservatives and say here is the 85% of what we agree on. let's push for that together. that led to the first dinner meeting in chicago after the philadelphia society which you are a former president and there were i think 11 of us are of let first people from different groups are around the country and we said let's figure out how we can work more effectively. although there before the annual resource and close brings the had more than 600 people with 42 different countries, 325 ceos and organizations get together for four days of conferencing talking to each other and a lot of hallway chatter about let's

cooperate on this project or maybe we can work together on something that we agree. bringing the together is one of the critical roles that heritage has played. we are not there to knock somebody else. we were there to build organizations to figure out how we can be more positive. you know this from the lectures and seminars that we put on so often in the times when a congressman or staffer on the congressional or senatorial committee will call us and say we need somebody over here to testify on this particular subject. and i will call derek morgan.org jim or one of our experts. we don't have anybody that quite a does that, but at hoover they have a guy that is very, very good so we will call him up and read deutsch for him to come. maybe if the professor at texas

a&m to see again how we can add and multiplied and take those resources were so diffused around the country and bring them into washington and the difference in the policy arena not simply in terms of how they are working out there beyond the beltway. >> we have always been concerned at the heritage about young people and one of the questions that we have is what advice do you have for young people, young leaders in the conservative movement. >> it is such an exciting time to be a conservative to be able to communicate with all of the new and different and exciting ways that young people can communicate. i did this every time i met with our incoming and turns. our intern program is -- we call with the young leaders program because it is really more than the interest the had.

65 and terms, three times a year times of of 30 years we've been doing it. what does that come to? 6,000. >> i will take your word for it. [laughter] >> it's a lot of young people that have come through the program. the first thing i tell them as i give them some opening comments, go back and read some of the great people that helped form the ideas, and develop the ideas and form the institutions you are now a part of not just at heritage but read about what the chicago school did in terms of comfort in economics from the inevitable socialism into some principled thinking the leaves back to the market and why the market matters. read about russell kirk and his emphasis on what an ordered

society needs, while liberty has to be based on tradition and prudence and then you'll see all of a sudden they are enforcing it because milton friedman said yes we want freedom, but then the fundamental question demand is what do you do with that freedom? and that's what he talks about in order the liberty. so, get to learn what these people say. and we have volumes that say a couple happen to be here right now. one of the great builders and collaborators on the conservative movement to bring together so many different strains of ideas, that's the first thing i tell people. the second one was don't be discouraged. if he were around post barry goldwater why i was finishing my mba my parents were afraid i was

quite troubled because i was so politically involved in pennsylvania and downtown philadelphia wasn't strong territory. the university of pennsylvania. they were introducing them in these two -- one brilliant professor and one leader. they were going to introduce some goldwater and some kids down in the third and fourth row started throwing tomatoes and eggs at us. it was a political indoctrination of the tougher sort. it to the young people today that got this rich history of the political leaders that have come along and the institutional

base, and you mentioned before some of coal from weekend panthers and some of the others with whom we worked. americans for tax reform. i'm going to leave somebody out which is always dangerous. but again, they are all there. they were not their years ago when you were youngsters and essentials to the whole thing. by the way the sunday before the election of 1964 the bulletin called me and said you are the highest ranking goldwater volunteer we can find. what's going to happen in philadelphia? i said if we lose philadelphia less than 100,000 votes, barry goldwater will carry the state of pennsylvania.

we lost by 400,000. pennsylvania as i said wasn't a strong cold water country pivoted but my point is that was tough publicly back then. now, my gosh, basically good guys have control over one half of the converse at least, basically good guys. they need reinforcing and wheelchair that later on today. but we are so much better off and stronger and the ideas are more. they have to appreciate that bigger base that we've given them. >> looking on of 36 years but never been president of heritage, can you single out perhaps something that you are particularly proud of or even most proud of and that is a question that has several of our friend here today.

>> the policy that we talked about, the missile defense, rebuilding -- 4.5 million we have destroyed but the first thing the federal government is supposed to do is provide for the national defence. it isn't to give our preschool children a warm one edge. it's to provide for the national defence and if you are going to do preschool children programs did we decide somewhere along the line that we needed a 14th? anyway. number two, welfare reform

because welfare reform isn't a case as we pointed out it's the time under bill clinton of the welfare queens driving another and they're cadillacs and collecting more checks. welfare reform was essential as a building block towards reforming the basic unit of society, the family. and saying it is better to encourage them to throw the husband out and show the life and the other of. charles murray had his first job with us to what robert it did subsequently handled the rest. their front and center what's do it but where did with enterprise and. the biggest achievement as far as i am concerned is heritage is

a permanent institution in washington. >> you can't talk about policy options on capitol hill or in an administration even an administration like this without taking the view into consideration, and that i think is the legacy that we can start celebrating now as we look at 40 years of heritage. [applause] >> what about looking forward at the future clacks what do you see the future for heritage? >> i see a great future for heritage. we have had the great opportunity now for the last couple of months to be out and around the country. we have been almost 20 cities together meeting with heritage members and many of you have been with us in some of those

cities are now the country and talking and getting your input about where heritage should be going. but steady as she goes, heritage is built on a broad base of support among policymakers not only here in washington but in the state capitals around the country as well. that's why we have bob macdonald and page coming in from maine, and tom corydon coming in from pennsylvania today. three great governors all phasing very different set of challenges. our son, daughter-in-law and two granddaughters live in pennsylvania. you know the biggest challenge in pennsylvania right now is whether the government is keen to be the largest by year of alcohol in the world today. the government of alcohol by is more than any entity because

they have a state monopoly of abc stores. they will buy anything in pennsylvania so the republican dominated state legislature expense facing that. it's a no-brainer for most of us that the government has the head to keep pushing on it. in the meantime, it gets you so enthusiastic and excited about the federal system. the legislature in harrisburg have been encouraging fracking. shalem goes from pennsylvania up and they've been encouraging it to happen. if you go into pennsylvania and received -- see the new development coming and think that is where the oil industry in the united states really started and pennsylvanians. they are encouraging it. you get to the state line of new

york, we have andrew cuomo -- i blame this on jim demint he says it's like the difference between north korea and south korea. [laughter] the line between pennsylvania and new york one is driving and depressed because they won't let them do anything there. the geology is the same underground so we've got these great chances now with the federal system. that's what we are all about as a country. not every good idea is invented in fact very few of them are beyond the capital beltway and let's learn from each other. his lead the way as we have been talking here this morning and building heritage as a government institution. and i think that builds into this major force of american

policy changing think-tank culture not only here but it can be set across the country and even in the world. i think the question so many people here would like to have your address and that is what's next for you? >> the need thing and first thing i want to say is thanks to the board of trustees the boss to me to stay on. i'm going to be having authors in the pennsylvania avenue on the other side of capitol hill i will be there about 20% of the time and i will be doing whatever i can to help preserve and advance the conservative movement out right and at the mean time looking for other opportunities to release our message around the world and around the country whenever i can. but as you know, there are a lot of organizations in that conservative movement like the

philadelphia society which will be celebrating its 50th anniversary a year from now. again, go back to the roots of the conservative movement. you were around shortly after, but at the moment when the only one around in that first meeting in new york city in november, 1964. the first time bill buckley met milton friedman and frank meijer was there. anyway that's when we started in this society to get next year we are going to have our 50th anniversary and that this kind of exciting because what that does is bring together a lot of the leaders in the institutions and a lot of leading intellectuals fallen on the country for that annual meeting and contract so there are a lot of things in terms of promoting our ideas and the building the conservative movement i look forward to doing and i can say

this. first it's that she's put up with me but she does remind me still she married me for better or worse but not for much. [laughter] i will be around. i don't play golf. >> the conservative movement, and i think it can truly be said america is so very blessed to have you as a past leader come as a present leader and i'm absolutely certain as a future leader in all these areas. thank you for being here. [applause]

a look at one book yuma a local literacy programs sponsored by the public library created to engage in the community and i love about issues important to the region and the world. booktv learned about this program on a recent visitor with the help of a local partner time warner cable. >> as you may know a library and start of the concept of what if one city read one book and discussed it in the late nineties and in the early 2000's the state of arizona actually started a program the state library started one dhaka arizona so we sort of piggyback on that idea and started one book yuma we started in 2003 and that was an initiative of the bus on the coming and that next year we were just sort of talking about what is it we really want to do with this program and what kind of community partners could we

bring in and really make this successful and so the county library partnered up and brought forth the college library and the western college offices of diversity we had a lot of input from the community college, we brought some of the high schools in to ask what kind of programs they were looking for and what the students would be interested in so it took another year to bring all that together and once we did that we did that formally in 2004 who was fabulous to work with and very understanding that it was our first year giving a big program within author. he was wonderful to work with and it's been going on ever since. >> every year we always get a very positive response. the main point of contact for people here for the program and

i never get complaints. it's always how are you doing this, where can i get the book? this is a great book. i appreciate you doing this. a lot comes from the people who read the book because they have a chance to meet the author. you read the book you like you beverley get the chance and this brings that to people and they seem to be very excited about it every year. it's gone from a few people to more people filling the room to are we going to have enough room and that is just in the last few years. >> our latest author wrote the art of racing in the rain and he come came here for today's and we had kind of a special event friday morning since the book is narrated we really wanted to bring in an animal aspect and so we had the humane society come to the heritage library some people got out and meet him and have him sign their book and then they got to learn a little

bit about what the human society has said it's a little detour from the normal community and i think people really enjoyed it.